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The underneath of a bed in a mental institution is actually pretty nice as far as underneath beds go. Very clean, though a little compact. Then again, considering we're hiding underneath Harriet Denby's bed in an attempt to prevent Caroline Denby from finding us in her sister's room at Lakehouse Clinic, I'll happily sacrifice comfort for safety. Above us, Harriet is laying in her bed, faking sleep, and I hear the door open and close back quietly. I can see our Denby's feet.
First, she walks around, probably to see if Harriet is really asleep. She doesn't say a word. I share a cautious glance with Eddie. The, she goes to the wardrobe in the corner of the room—she must think someone's hiding in there. Then, her feet appear beside the bed, but all of a sudden, Harriet screams before Denby can find Eddie and me.
The door opens again, and this time I can see the shoes of an orderly. "Is everything all right in here?" he asks. "It might be better if you left."
"Of course," Denby agrees hesitantly. "All right, Harriet, I'll see you very soon when you've had a little rest. Remember to be a good girl for the nurses."
Both pairs of shoes disappear out the door and it closes back. I move from underneath the bed first, helping Eddie up.
"Oh, Harriet," he says, "that was brilliant! You almost had me fooled." Harriet's still sitting straight up, clutching her blanket to her chest and staring straight ahead. I look at her, taking a step forward. I don't think she was trying to fool anyone. "Okay, okay, let's go."
"Eddie, I don't think she faked it," I tell him, eyes still glued on her.
"I can't leave," Harriet states shakily. "You can't protect me from Caroline. No one can."
Speaking gently to her, I say, "Harriet, do you want us to leave?" She just nods. "We'll come back. I promise. We'll figure this out." This time, she doesn't do anything. "Eddie, let's go."
—
We make it back to Anubis House just before curfew, and for a second I think we're home-free. Then, as I start going up the stairs and Eddie goes down the hallway into his room, Victor's voice says out of nowhere, "Welcome home, Mr. Miller and Miss Adams."
I close my eyes, grimacing. Great, he caught us. And the house is eerily quiet. Victor calmly ushers us into the living room, where the rest of the Anubis House residents are standing in a straight line. Trudy and Denby are also there.
"I am grateful," Victor starts, "to Miss Denby for bringing to my attention this flagrant breach of the rules. Students are not permitted to leave the grounds of Anubis House without permission. Let alone seek to gain entry to a discotheque."
Discotheque? Oh, right, Patricia's excuse.
"But—" Alfie begins.
"Be quiet!" Victor booms. "As some of you cannot be trusted, all of you must pay the price. Trudy."
"Yes, Victor," Trudy says. Her voice is almost small.
"From now until further notice, Anubis House is on lockdown," Victor announces. "This means students are not permitted to leave the house except to attend school. They are to be escorted to their classes. They are to be given basic rations only, which means no cakes, no treats." You've got to be joking with this! Alfie starts to protest. "Be quiet, Lewis! Now go to your rooms."
—
School goes by quick. Before I know it, the final bell of the day rings, chiming sharply as if it's reminding us that we're under lockdown. I find KT in an empty classroom, her laptop in front of her. "You okay?"
She looks at me, sighing. "I don't know. Do you think I'm Robert Frobisher-Smythe's great-granddaughter?"
I sit next to her slowly, trying to think of a response. "I think," I decide finally, "that unless he had another child no one knew about, a secret love child or something, it's not possible. The only Frobisher by blood I've ever met was Sarah. She never said anything about having a brother or sister."
"But what if it was a secret love child? What if... what if—"
"Don't torture yourself with 'what ifs,' KT," I tell her. "Even if it turns out that you are, the only way it'll change you is if you let it. You can't let it overpower you. If it's true, you stand up and show the world you're still you."
KT looks at me, sighing. "When you found out everything to do with your family, did it change you?"
"I think, for a while, it did," I admit. "It changed the way I looked at things, I think it may have changed the way I spoke to some people... but last year grounded me again. The knowledge might change you, but only in terms of having a piece of the puzzle you didn't have before. You put those pieces together, you get a picture of yourself. That picture might not be what you're hoping for, but... it won't be evil. Not you."
"What about you?"
Fabian appears at the door before I can even start to think about an answer, saying, "Denby is herding up the sheep to go back to the house, so we better join them." He sits on the table, mimicking a sheep as he looks at us.
KT looks between us. "I'm going away. I have to."
"No, look," Fabian says again before I can respond, "I know it's been a tough day—"
"I can't unleash evil onto the world," she interrupts.
"You won't," I tell her. "You couldn't. You're too good a person—"
"Who's Frobisher-Smythe's great-granddaughter!"
"You might be Frobisher's great-granddaughter," Fabian says. "Why don't we check Frobisher's records?" KT hesitantly agrees and he pulls up another chair, putting it between her and I.
"You can look up his records online?" I question. He nods, pulling the laptop in front of him and typing away. "At least we won't get paper cuts."
KT lets out a humorless laugh as Fabian starts to pull up the records on the computer. "We can start with his marriage certificate... here we are." He says. I look over, seeing scanned documents on the screen. "Look, there's his wife, and there's his daughter, Sarah. And the adoption certificate for Lily Henry. That's all there is."
KT gives a relieved sigh as I look closer at the screen, seeing the numbers in the bottom right-hand corner. "Fabian, it says page one of two."
Fabian looks at it, squinting. "She's right. There's another page. Hold on." He pulls it up. "It says here Frobisher was married twice, and he had a son with his first wife, born on the—"
"The same day as my grandfather," KT finishes gravely. She closes the laptop. "Well, that seals the deal."
"Just because it's true," I say as she grabs her computer and stands, "doesn't mean you're going to unleash a great evil—"
"What does it mean, then, Ashley?" KT asks me.
"It means you're related to him, nothing else," I tell her, following her out. Fabian follows us and I lower my voice considerably after seeing that Denby's waiting for Jerome to hurry up and get his locker open so she can escort us back to the house. "Listen, KT, it's not you. Just remember that. It's not you."
KT just nods as the three of us join Eddie, Patricia, and Alfie at the end of the hallway. Eddie says in a lowered voice, "Guys, we need to get Harriet out, and fast."
"But how?" Patricia questions. "We live in a maximum-security facility right now."
"Well, I think there might be one way. What if the door that I found in the tunnel leads outside? Maybe KT's key can get us through."
"KT?" Fabian says to her, asking for her input.
KT looks at them, fidgeting. "There's something that I need to tell you guys first." Patricia and Alfie, in particular, look at her curiously. "Harriet told me that I'm Frobisher's great-granddaughter. Fabian checked, and I am."
"Did not see that one coming," Patricia remarks.
"So I understand if you guys want me out of Sibuna—"
"No way!" Eddie denies. "We've got the descendant on our team, two of them, in fact," he adds with a nonchalant motion towards me.
"Yeah," Alfie agrees. "Take that, Team Evil!"
KT beams, putting her hand over her eye and whispering, "Sibuna." We follow her movements, until Denby's voice cuts in from down the hall.
"Well, chop-chop," Denby says sharply. "Come on, everyone." We all pretend that we're messing with our hair or scratching our faces so she doesn't think anything is up.
"Oh, so they said it might be conjunctivitis?" Fabian says as an excuse.
"Con-jun-what?" I ask.
"Pink eye."
"Why can't you just say pink eye?"
—
Denby escorts us back to Anubis House, all the while sending suspicious glances Sibuna's way. When we finally get back, Victor speaks to her at the side while Trudy pops her head out from the kitchen, watching us come in.
"I'd ask about dinner, Trudy," Jerome remarks, "but I don't want to know."
He's holding his hand to his forehead like he's hurt himself or has a headache or something. "What happened to you?" I ask.
"I hit my head on my locker. I think a kiss might make me feel better—"
"Maybe later."
Trudy says in a hushed, happy tone, "I might have a secret cookie stash." Well, at least one adult around here recognizes that we're growing and like cookies.
"Where?" Jerome asks immediately.
"Come on. Follow Trudy."
The ones of us that aren't in Sibuna, excluding Alfie, follow her into the kitchen. Alfie's at the tail-end of the cookie monsters' line, and I grab his shirt before he goes through the kitchen. "Alfie, remember the tunnels?"
Eddie nods. "With the guards upstairs, we might not get a better chance to rescue Harriet from the hospital. I say we go now. Ashley?"
"Agreed."
"Well, you know," Alfie says nervously, "I would only hold you back with the hunger pains and everything."
Eddie nods slowly. "Ah, so nothing to do with the, I don't know, tunnels and zombies then?"
Alfie laughs nervously, trying to shrug. "You know what I mean by this, like, Sibuna, food, Sibuna."
"Chocolate chip cookies!" Joy's voice exclaims from the kitchen.
"Food," he adds. "That—it's—I got to—"
"Go get a cookie, cookie monster," I tell him with a roll of my eyes. "And save some for us."
Alfie snaps his fingers at me, pointing with a grin on his face. "No promises!"
—
After we change out of our uniforms into clothes more suitable to explore the tunnels, we meet in the kitchen once we're sure no one's in there or the living room. Eddie's the last one to join us, holding a large mirror as he explains how he got out of the tunnels without being blinded and without an amulet to protect him. We go through our passageway, to the cellar, to the antechamber, and finally, through the bookcase to the tunnels.
Eddie looks at us, holding up the mirror in front of all five of us as we try to all fit behind it. The beam starts to scan us. "You guys ready?"
I can see the light on my feet and rising, until it hits the mirror and backfires into the spot where it's coming from. The beam disappears and Eddie lowers the mirror, grinning at us.
"So simple in hindsight," Patricia comments.
Eddie smirks, taking the lead to the door he found down here. For the most part, we walk, until the walls lower and we have to crawl to the door. "Guys, up here," he says finally. "See? The moon symbol."
I crane my neck to see what he's showing us, nodding. "That's it. KT, you brought your key?" KT nods, crawling past so she can get to it.
"He still thinks Sibuna could do that," Fabian says, "you know?"
"Dust, cobwebs, rusted over," KT notes. She turns her key in the lock, struggling to move the door. It, with some help, slides over to reveal more of the tunnels. Oh, great, another tunnel. Like we didn't have enough of those. "Yep. Huh, I recognize this place from every nightmare I've ever had."
"I feel like I've seen worse," I comment, following her through and standing to my full-height. We're in a room with what looks like a stone coffin in the middle. Creepy. "If there's a skeleton in there, I take that back."
"I've been here before," Eddie tells us. "This was my Osirian vision. It's a crypt. We're in a tomb."
I nod several times. "Okay, can we get out of here then?"
"One of these doors has to lead outside," Patricia says.
Fabian shines his light, saying worriedly, "Well, I think they only open from the other side."
"So, what, we're essentially trapped with only one way out?" I ask. "Great, because my life's dream has always been to hang out in a tomb!"
"If we can't get out of here," Eddie says, "we can't get to Harriet."
I look over at KT, who's staring at the other side of the coffin in the middle uneasily. I walk over, seeing what she's so scared of. It's engraved. Initials and years, with only one conclusion that can be made from it.
R.F.S 1881 – 1922.
"Holy Sibuna," I mutter as she grabs a hold of my arm. "Of course it is. Why would it be anything else?"
"Guys," KT states grimly, "this is Frobisher's crypt." Suddenly, the sound of stone creaking echoes. We turn to it—the door! Fabian runs to it and we follow, but it's too late. It's closed. There's no way out now. "We're trapped."
I look back at the stone coffin. "In Robert Frobisher-Smythe's crypt."